Senegal - back to Africa

As I stepped out of the plane and made my way into the terminal in Dakar I began to realise that I had not been back to Africa for 31 years.  Over my week long visit to Senegal I was constantly taken back to that first visit I had paid to Dar es Salaam in 1980-81.  It did not take me long to understand that my numerous visits to South Africa from 1994 were different.  South Africa has been a different Africa.

Dakar is not a great city, but the Senegalese have every right to be proud of their country and the strength of their democracy.  The rains had not arrived on our visit - but they were due.  On our trip to Bambey and Tuaba farmers were already planting crops in anticipation of the rains. The mosque at Tuaba was among the most impressive I have seen.

Visiting an NGO office and later an experiment station at Bambey on our one trip beyond Dakar took me back to many similar visits in Asia and Africa.  The rest of the time was spent indoors in Dakar listening to research on and for  'food security' being discussed and reported. We were well looked after by our hosts at CORAF/WECARD.

On our short visit to Goree Island I was pleased to see the Mariama Ba school for girls, having read her novella, 'So Long a Letter' before arriving in Dakar. Like all tourists we learnt that the wall-scaling scenes in the Guns of Navarone had been filmed on the island, though there is no mention of this fact in the movie's entry in Wikipedia!

European Conversations 4 - Checkland

Not before time, and many years past his retirement date, Lancaster University hosted on Friday 20th April a special Colloquium to honour Peter Checkland. He has certainly been one of  Lancaster Management School's must illustrious scholars with significant international impact. Google, for example, thows up the following citations:

Systems thinking - Checkland - Cited by 7510

Soft systems methodology: a thirty year retrospective - Checkland - Cited by 4344

… to learning: A development of systems thinking for the … - Checkland - Cited by 391

I was delighted to be able to attend. It is not often these days that one has a chance to be part of a [insert collective noun] of Systems Professors!  There was a good turn-out of alumni and invited guests. The speakers were, in the main, stimulating, humorous, and well able to contextualise what they said in the achievements of the over-30 years action research programme at Lancaster that generated SSM.  A series of 10 videos have been produced of the event. My one grizzle was that it is a pity the programme did not allow for more questions and interaction.

A particularly pleasing feature of the event was the recogntion and praise the Open University (OU) recieved for its role in making SSM accessible to a whole cadre of  students who studied the course T301 Complexity Management and Change (and subsequent modules).  Mike Haines, a well known SSM consultant, spoke at the event about his experiences at the OU, as did John Naughton who wrote the original SSM course material.

John Naughton, the final speaker addressed the conundrum that faces SSM and Systems approaches more generally.  Why is it that they are not more widely taken up?  This is a question that Peter himself posed, concluding that in the history of ideas 40 years was but the blink of an eye.  John elaborated on this theme drawing on Thomas Kuhn's scholarship - explanations based on paradigm shifts that John finds particularly satisfying and relevant.  In a sense Kuhn's thesis is about the nature of clubs, who makes the rules, how membership is negotiated and how, after a falling out, a new club is formed (invented?) with new rules for membership. John has posted his talk, delivered in more scholarly terms than these.

For my part I find Kuhn's ideas satisfy a form of ex poste analysis.  My concern is to better understand how the current situation can be transformed, purposefully.  I am too impatient for Kuhn. I am also not convinced that the epistemological-technological complex that we humans have invented in the last century is as susceptible to breakdown as Kuhn's analysis suggests.  Each piece of technology reifies understandings of a particular form and time. I include here social technologies such as GDP, road rules and the like. Elsewhere I argue that in the Anthropocene all the social technologies that human's have invented in the past ought to be subject to critical reappraisal in terms of systemic fitness for today's circumstances - amongst which I would include the concept of paradigm itself!

In his closing remarks Peter cited three sources of possible illumination for the failure of SSM to be taken up.  These were:
(i) G.H. Lewes (1879) "..the new object presented to sense or the new idea presented to thought must be soluable in the old experience.."
(ii) G. Vickers "people seek confirmation which reassures the person of the validity of his (sic) judgement of reality. Confirmation is needed and is prized".
(iii) Diana Athill (Somewhere Towards the End, 2008 Granta Books): "How does the written word work? Whatever is needy in the reader is taking in whatever the text offers to assuage that need".

My interpretation of these insightful observations in terms of my own scholarship is that several phenomena are at play:
(i) we each have our own (unique) traditions of understanding out of which we think and act  - interpretation draws on these unique traditions;
(ii) human communication has a biological basis - we can never share understandings - all we share is our ability to live in, and use, language. Thus agreeing that mutual understanding has occurred is a protracted process - and much aided by experiential activity rather than words, whether on paper or verbally;
(iii) humans language - that is human communication is a braiding of emotioning and languaging (verbal and non-verbal). Put another way how something is said, or who says it can, in context, be more powerful than what is said (Geoffrey Vickers' concept of appreciation could be said to function on this 'mechanism');
(iv) the challenge posed by Peter could be reframed as: how can the experience of listening differently be created for an other?  This is a challenge that Humberto Maturana set for himself.  Those keen to understand what Maturana has to say (usually triggered by personal contact or a circumstance that makes one open to his work) grapple with his writing from which new understandings emerge. Many however are not triggered by the 'new language' to listen differently and thus dismiss his work.
(v) acceptance of the theoretical basis of SSM involves an epistemological shift that challenges personal identities in more profound ways than merely accepting a different explanation (as in a paradigm shift).  This is the shift from starting with situations of concern and using systems as epistemological devices created for the purpose of learning about, and changing, the situation in contrast to seeing systems as ontologies, 'real things' in the world.
(vi) there is also a praxis legacy issue - SSM practice was primarily centred in a university setting which had many advantages but it has not spawned major practices (in the sense of a doctor's or consultancy practice) that specialise in SSM. Had such practices existed they could have made it known that SSM was being used, made claims about its usefulness and thus created both brand recognition and demand pull for business and training.  In a sense the systems consultancy Vanguard is doing this for its approach with demonstrated utility in the public sector. Whilst there are many consultants who use SSM very effectively, most in my experience use it as a form of silent practice - the approach and underlying thinking and practice skills are not given away as part of the engagement with clients (despite advocacy to do so).

Despite these issues of uptake of SSM I am pleased to say that it can still be studied at the OU as part of the MSc in Systems Thinking in Practice (STiP) core module (course): 'Thinking strategically: systems tools for managing change' (TU811). SSM also appears in several other OU courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels and features strongly in Rosalind Armson's recent book based largely on OU experience.  But it is a pity that  resources are'nt available to create a specialist SSM course as both a way of thinking and acting as well as a methodology (and method) for practical action to improve.  The former Lancaster applied masters experience demonstrates that to 'get it' well, SSM requires a significant immersion in both theory and practice. 

European Conversations 3

Travelling via Crewe to Glasgow, Dumgoyn and looking out over Loch Lomond.

European Conversations 2

Navigating the Anthropocene

If you are a climate skeptic, or one of the great 'switched-off', then my heading for this post may anger you, or merely fail to make sense.  Last night I watched the 93 minute movie called 'Home' which provides a comprehensive overview of the contemporary human condition as I understand it.  It is done in visually startling ways.  I recommend you watch it.  Given my background and interest there was for me nothing greatly new in the different elements of the film, but the totality is compelling.  Of course how I and the makers of 'Home' understand our situation is clearly not shared by governments and the majority of citizens otherwise we would be doing something else - and doing it with more urgency. 

LikewiseWilliam D. Nordhaus' article 'Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong' in the New York review of Books (March 22, 2012) ought to be compulsory reading for all Parliamentarians...and climate skeptics!

I also found Decca Aitkenhead's interview with Abhijit Banerjee in yesterday's Guardian thought provoking - his book, 'Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty' co-authored with  Esther Duflo is clearly worth engaging with, especially as I am now involved in designing and facilitating the 'Learning Project' as part of the AusAID - CSIRO Africa Food Security Initiative. I liked the following points in particular:

• "When aid is carefully designed to navigate the specific socio-cultural landscape of its recipients' lives, it begins to deliver the sort of results [Jeffrey] Sachs claims."

• "there is no Big Idea or golden bullet, so we should stop thinking about "Aid", and start thinking about "aid". 

• "When studied closely, it becomes clear that people who live on less than a dollar a day are not uniquely mysterious, but subject to the very same psychological and behavioural patterns as the rest of us"

• "the real single biggest difference," Banerjee agrees, "is that the state has delivered a whole bunch of stuff for us, and we forget how much is enforced and sustained by the state. The poorest person in the UK drinks extremely high-quality water, and this is not something that is just God-given;"

• "Weaker states cannot deliver, nor can they expect therefore to have the right to restrain"

• "There's an inconsistency in time between your self in repose and your self in action, and that's a permanent tension we live in all the time."

•  "Nobody wants to be told that there's actually just a thousand small problems, and you'd better figure out how to solve all of them. That's not a good message to deliver to anyone." 

• "I think the real value of aid is in promoting and digging deep into something, and committing to generate innovations," he explains. "And that's what a national government has a hard time doing. Why? Because it's something that requires the willingness to fail, many times."

• "We need to learn to work with political systems that are not perfect instead of taking the view: let's first fix the politics, then we'll fix the rest." 

  Given the  attention being paid to this book I would have welcomed more critical scrutiny of the authors research methodology i.e., the use of randomised control trials ....to produce the evidence base, emulating the pharmaceutical industry. To my mind this is a trap that leads to a dead-end.  Drug trials on humans, who basically have the same physiology can, if ethically defensible, produce 'solid evidence' that enables action with some confidence, but as we also know environmental or contextual variables can effect interactions that even the best designed RCB experiments cannot deal with.  When the situation changes from humans to development 'experiments' then the situation is 'wicked' or characterised by uncertainty, complexity, interdependencies, multiple stakholders and thus perspsectives and possibly conflict. Hence the ex poste studies of these authors can say very little about what should be done in future - that will depend, as they seem to realise, on  activity carefully designed to navigate the specific socio-cultural landscape of  recipients' lives.  This is what reflexive systems thinking in practice sets out to do.

  The danger in these authors' methodological approach is that policy makers will take the evidence and convert it into blueprints - rather than to see it as inputs into careful, long-term contextually sensitive design and adaptation. This lack of reflexivity leaves the approach, as noted by Aitkenhead, open to accusations of underestimating the importance of power.  Such critiques are valid but I wish those who make them would articulate how they conceptualise power and thus what the praxis is they would have as a response to power as they understand it!

Why so little systemic sensibility?

I have already bemoaned the absence of a systemic sensibility amongst many keynote speakers at the recent Planet Under Pressure conference in London. Having been UK based now for over a month I find the absence of a systemic sensibility assails me almost everywhere I look or listen. Of particular concern is the BBC, as exemplified by the 10pm News on BBC 1 or the Today program on Radio 4.  Take last week for example where the reportage on two issues stood out as lacking systemic sensibility. These were the conflict in Syria and fracking in England.


Most reporting on Syria has descended to a simple narrative of good versus evil.  I have yet to see in the mainstream media any nuanced account of events that situates what is said in the ethnic and religious complexity of Syria and how this is played out demographically both in the country as a whole and in particular locales and cities. What is reported is less intellegent and certainly less nuanced than most computer games dedicated to the struggles of good and evil. Of course I am not the first to notice this lack.

Britain is somewhat behind the US and Australia in coming to terms with what fracking is, and appreciating its systemic implications.  For example, fracking had clearly slipped past the concerns of one of my close colleagues who knows lots about environmental issues. Last week a report was released essentially giving the go-ahead to fracking.  This is a great tragedy. And the early reporting of what is at issue has not helped. My exception is a good interview with Caroline Lucas this morning on Radio 4.   So what was missing from the reporting that leads me to claim it lacks systemic sensibility:

1. Reporters do not critically examine how commissioned reports are framed.  The framing adopted for Syria is to tame, in the words of Rittel and Webber, a 'wicked problem'. In the case of fracking it has largely been framed as a technical issue, subject to risk apppraisals.  It is also framed as a practice that can help to secure the UK's energy future.  In all instances these are inapproporiate framings.  Fracking is best understood as a human activity not a purely technical activity - and we know that human systems are different and regularly fail.  Over time I would claim they always fail. Risk is also an inadequate framing; I prefer danger because the systemic consequences of fracking are dangerous and when they go wrong are irreversable.

To think that shale gas is part of a solution to the UK's energy future rather than an exacerbation of the problem of carbon pollution, is to fail to adequately appreciate and resolve the social purpose of fracking.   As Caroline Lucas outlined the current institutional arrangements should be such that no company or bank in their right mind would invest in fracking because it was a social and thus economic dead end.   Instead we need investment in technologies that advance a post-carbon future.  Doing the wrong thing righter does not secure the future.

2. Reporters do not critically examine through their questions the systemic implications of boundary judgments that are made through discourse, terms of reference, membership of review panels etc. In the case of fracking look at the terms of reference, also the panel membership and then ask questions about the potential implications of fracking failure (i.e. heavy metal contamination of waterways and aquifers + insurance liability for subsidence). Of course behind this observation lies the systemic failure of our governance arrangments because they fail to generate practices that formulate strategies and actions, such as reviews, based on multiple partial perspectives. 

Fortunately not all media reportage lacks a systemic sensibility. Mariana Mazzucato in her Guardian Article ' Without State Funds there'd be no Google or Glaxo' makes a lot of systemic sense.  But she is an academic and not a reporter....and a heterodox economist to boot!

European Conversations 1

At EMCSR in Vienna: Edgar Morin

In my book ‘Systems Practice’ I apologised for my lack of engagement with systems scholarship from France, Germany etc. I thus felt fortunate to be present at EMCSR to hear a keynote address by EdgarMorin. Rainer Zimmerman on behalf of the Bertalanffy Centre honoured Morin with a Ludwig von Bertalanffy award in complexity thinking.  In his excellent address Rainer said (Laudatio: Edgar Morin at the University of Vienna, 10th April 2012):

‘Ladies & Gentlemen, colleagues & friends, dear Edgar Morin,

with some short remarks I would like to once more welcome this year’s recipient of the Ludwig von Bertalanffy award in complexity thinking. You might have already a strong inkling as to who this may be. You are right: It is Edgar Morin. And we are very happy to have him here in person today.

The Bertalanffy Centre honors with this award his outstanding achievements in the field of complex systems, not only in terms of his technical results, but especially with a view to his extremely relevant input for a sociological interpretation of these results and the perspective of practical and highly political consequences derived from it.

Edgar Morin’s biographer, Emmanuel Lemieux , once called Morin “The Undisciplined” (L’indiscipliné), and that is I think what he can be actually called, within the range of this words’ double connotation. In fact, being “undisciplined” is probably the most important pre-condition in order to eventually succeed in a project which in Morin’s case shows up as a new approach to what is classically called “Scienza nuova”.

This project is best described in a text however that is not really published yet, because it has been part of a former draft for Morin’s gigantic work of “The Method” (La méthode) of which six volumes have been printed so far. One finds the crucial passage in the originally third part of the work under the provisional title “The Becoming of Becoming” (Le devenir du devenir) conceived between 1987 and 1989, but skipped later on: [I quote in my own translation.] “We should arrive now at the point that is called epistemological, which is the point of critically examining the scientific theories under the viewpoint of their value, of their pertinence, of their coherence. This obviously implies that experience is not sufficient in order to valuate a theory, because – as it is not a simple reflexion of something given, but an interpretation that organizes knowledge – it must be examined also under the viewpoint that is evidently superior. Superior, that is to say that epistemology must be a knowledge of knowledge, a theory of theories, a science of sciences.”  Hence, we can realize immediately the explicitly interdisciplinary scope of this approach which even encompasses what Sigmund Freud once called a “meta-theory”: a scientific (indeed: onto-epistemic) theory which is able to outline the various modes of actually developing theories in the first place.

This is the reason why Edgar Morin has called this enterprise a “method”. As he clarifies in a talk given in Nice in 1980, “[this] is a method in the strategical sense of this expression that shall extract something absolutely evident, but always forgotten, ever since one speaks of scientific knowledge: the presence of the subject, that is to say of what searches, of what thinks and of what eventually discovers. Heisenberg once said [that] from now on the method cannot be separated from its object; we should complete this formula by saying that also, the method cannot be separated from its subject, that is to say from what it actually practises.”  This is the important point that is re-stated in the now third volume of the series called “The Knowledge of Knowledge” (La connaissance de la connaissance): “Each object must be conceived within its relation to the knowing subject that is rooted itself within a culture, a society, a history.”

In other words, this approach implies something that we can call “a cognitive revolution” which operates on the level of principles and modes of the organization of ideas.  Hence, what we can recognize here quite clearly is the explicit relationship to the ethical aspects of the sciences on the one hand, and the role that is played by undisciplined qualities on the other: The latter is actually what defines the route towards a becoming conception that is still unknown in the first place. Morin often quotes here Antonio Machado’s verse on the wanderer: “Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar.” (Wanderer, there is no way, it makes itself a way by walking.) This is a very important issue for the universities nowadays, especially for those who prefer to classify research according to the profit gained by its applications rather than leaving a space of free play for fundamental ideas that do not promise any clear results in the beginning, if at all.

In fact, unity and diversity are the main concepts from which Morin’s approach is furnished. And this is exactly where rational science meets the aesthetics of life on the one hand, and ethics on the other. Morin himself chooses a somewhat pointed formula for this in his more recent interview with Djénane Kareh Tager: “Ce qui sépare est à la source du mal. Ce qui relie est à la source du bien.” (What separates is at the origin of evil. What joins up is at the origin of the good.)  As he explains, this serves the derivation of daily life from its philosophical, scientific as well as artistic foundations, ending up in a poetical shape that represents (and unveils) love as its structural principle.

In a sense, we could say that Edgar Morin strives for the verification of life by means of an explicitly undisciplined utilization of scientific interdisciplinarity. Hence, strictly speaking, he looks for truth altogether, and he looks also for his own truth. (Note by the way that this is very much in the sense of the Italian school on what is called “anti-psychiatry” as introduced by Basaglia and Pirella in the sixties. They called this the principle of verifica.) And this is how he once answered the question for his becoming of a researcher (chercheur): “Je cherchais mes vérités. Je me cherchais. Je ne sais pas: je cherchais. C’est peut-être pourquoi je suis devenu un chercheur?” (I looked for my truths. I looked for myself. I don’t know: I searched. This is perhaps why I have become a searcher/re-searcher?).

While he was doing so, he actually produced many works for which we ourselves cannot be more than thankful: for this rich composition of ideas and conclusions whose avail and benefit is what sets us onto new lines of thinking, both in the sense of rational reflexion as well as in terms of emotional praxis. Thank you very much for that, Edgar Morin.’

I found many resonances with my own research and praxis interests in the talk by Morin.  Some points from my notes include:

·        Complexity is a grade of diversity of a system

·        A system can be both greater than or less than the sum of the parts

·        A system can only be understood in the context of the environment (of the system)

·        Classical science is in crisis – our institutions do not allow a change of paradigm

·        Universities are devoid of life

·        I am in society and society is inside me – each generates the other

·        The part is inside the world and the world is inside the part

·        We are always an excitation of emotions in the moment

·        When you have passion without reason you have madness but the opposite is its own form of madness

·        Quoting Heraclitus – living by dying and dying by life

·        What can we do? We are obliged to make a decision. Each decision contains a wager on uncertainty and this limits the power of human decisions

·        Today the Earth System faces disintegration in the absence of its own regulation

·        He believes it is possible to metamorphose – the examples of Christianity, Islam, socialism, democracy, capitalism are all examples of significant social developments that came from isolated situations – all situations have the possibility of the improbable

·        Hope does not reduce uncertainty but opens up possibility.

·        There is no principle of immortality

Planet Under Pressure

I cannot imagine anyone leaving this event still questioning that our planet is under pressure (PuP). But even that opening sentence is not an adequate framing of what is at issue.  And so it was at PuP, far too much inadequate framing and sensible, rigorous, use of language.

Let me start again. There is no doubt that human activity, directly and indirectly is affecting the quality of life on Earth. The public consolidation of the neologism, 'the Anthropocene', evident throughout the conference, is symbolic of scientific understanding as well as the way in which science is done.  The Earth will survive but life on Earth as we know it may not - what is at stake is the future quality of the relationship of humans with the biosphere, with other species (biodiversity) and with each other.  However at PuP a systemic sensibility, a capability to understand and talk in terms of relational dynamics, was not always evident in the plenaries and  the parallel sessions.

Several plenary speakers spoke of the need for systems thinking, and taking a systems approach.  These included Shobhakar Dhakal, Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova as well as Wendy Watson-Wright, Deputy-Director General of UNESCO.  Julia-Marton Lefevre challenged the on-going use of the three pillars concept, arguing instead for more systemic understanding and approaches.  Learning as a key idea was not much in evidence except for Laurence Tubiana who stressed its centrality to change processes.  On the other hand in the word-cloud derived from the conference policy briefs the most prominent word was 'systems'.  Several speakers spoke about complex adaptive systems, some even referring to a complex system of systems!  In other words there was considerable confusion in the use of language (and thus thinking) about systems with some demonstrating a commitment to systems as ontologies ('real' entities) and others appreciating that systems were epistemological devices for knowing and acting.

Lack of theoretical clarity about the concept 'system' obfuscates getting on with the job - of taking practical action.  Too often speakers were left articulating exhortations and normative claims that ran the risk of leaving them naked in terms of how to move forward.  In a way the coining of the term 'Anthropocene' also has the potential to distract attention away from praxis - theory informed practical action - because it conserves a manner of abstraction involving classification, typical of doing science.  As an aside I left feeling that no scientist in future could defend ethically committing to an exercise in classification such as the MEA, because such exercises have become a means to avoid action.

I was pleased to have been at this conference even though my pessimism regarding our ability to act has not shifted greatly.  There is a conference declaration: "First State of the Planet Declaration" which is worth reading (see below).  Along with many others I was invited to comment on the draft of this manifesto and there have been many columns of reporting both in the press and digital media.  Here is what I said based on my experience of sessions I attended and my own research:

1. There is a lack of reflexivity on the part of scientists themselves.  Multiple perspectives including social scientists are needed to frame the research questions and agendas; more than lip-service needs to be paid to inter and trans-disciplinary research approaches (there is a need for significant institutional reform); the linear knowledge transfer paradigm needs to be abandoned in favour of knowledge co-production.

2. There is a need for more conceptual rigour - sustainability is not a state but an ongoing process; targets distort practice and produce perverse outcomes; the language of 'solutions' is inadequate in terms of the nature of the situations that have to be dealt with and implies science can deliver panaceas - this is not the case.

 3. The need for systemic understanding and practice was highlighted throughout the conference but too often this was confused with systematic and also too often people's comments and framings suggested a lack of systemic sensibilty (contextual and relational thinking and practice). For example the 'goal of increased education for women' was regularly espoused in the conference but when expressed as a goal or a target it ignores the systemic appreciation that the education of women has to be the result of changing patterns of social relations, personal identies and the beginning of the conservation of a different manner of living by many families and communities. Educated women is an emergent property of these systemic processes.

4. The conference has enacted an apartheid of the emotions - the result is that we risk conserving scientific communications that foster an emotion of fear rather than an emotion of hope. One of the best ways to alay fear is to offer people some agency in their own situations (including conference attendees).

5. More attention needs to be paid in the declaration to the systemic effects flowing on from climate change to the water cycle.

6. We need to abandon tripple bottom line approaches and framing and state clearly that the economic is merely one aspect of being social - and a domain where innovation has to happen.

7. Under research there is a need to recognise governance and praxis (theory informed practical action) as important and neglected areas of research.

You can judge from the declaration as to whether my points were taken on board or not.

Planet Under Pressure: New Knowledge Towards Solutions
1. Research now demonstrates that the continued functioning of the Earth system as it has supported the well-being of human civilization in recent centuries is at risk. Without urgent action, we could face threats to water, food, biodiversity and other critical resources: these threats risk intensifying economic, ecological and social crises, creating the potential for a humanitarian emergency on a global scale.
2. In one lifetime our increasingly interconnected and interdependent economic, social, cultural and political systems have come to place pressures on the environment that may cause fundamental changes in the Earth system and move us beyond safe natural boundaries. But the same interconnectedness provides the potential for solutions: new ideas can form and spread quickly, creating the momentum for the major transformation required for a truly sustainable planet.
3. The defining challenge of our age is to safeguard Earth’s natural processes to ensure the well-being of civilization while eradicating poverty, reducing conflict over resources, and supporting human and ecosystem health.
4. As consumption accelerates everywhere and world population rises, it is no longer sufficient to work towards a distant ideal of sustainable development. Global sustainability must become a foundation of society. It can and must be part of the bedrock of nation states and the fabric of societies.
5. The Global Environmental Change Programmes1 with the International Council for Science convened the Planet Under Pressure: New Knowledge Towards Solutions conference to assess the state of the planet and explore solutions to impending global crises. The conference brought together nearly 3000 leading experts and decision-makers to discuss global challenges and offer new solutions. And at least 3000 people across the world participated in the conference online.
6. Humanity has taken a huge leap and become a planetary-scale force. Significant changes have occurred since the 1950s, and the rate of change is accelerating. Researchers observe unsafe levels of pollution, ecological change and resource demand, with potentially catastrophic consequences for our global civilisation.
7. The past decade has seen the emergence of important areas of new scientific understanding by which to define what we are witnessing:
 A1. Humanity’s impact on the Earth system has become comparable to planetary-scale geological processes such as ice ages. Consensus is growing that we have driven the planet into a new epoch, the Anthropocene, in which many Earth-system processes and the living fabric of ecosystems are now dominated by human activities. That the Earth has experienced large-scale, abrupt changes in the past indicates that it could experience similar changes in the future. This recognition has led researchers to take the first step to identify planetary and regional thresholds and boundaries that, if crossed, could generate unacceptable environmental and social change.
A2. The Earth system is a complex, interconnected system that includes the global economy and society, which are themselves highly interconnected and interdependent. Such systems can confer remarkable stability and facilitate rapid innovation. But they are also susceptible to abrupt and rapid changes and crises, such as global financial meltdowns or the volatility of the global food system.
A3. Assessments of current mechanisms for governing global environmental change show why existing international arrangements are not dealing quickly enough with current global challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss. There is growing evidence that diverse partnerships amongst local, national and regional governments as well as business and civil society provide essential safety nets should singular global policies fail – a polycentric approach for planetary stewardship.

8. These insights from recent research demand a new perception of responsibilities and accountabilities of nation states to support planetary stewardship. This requires goals aimed at global sustainability in order to achieve universal sustainable development. A crucial transformation is to move away from income as the key constituent of well-being and to develop new indicators that measure actual improvements in well-being at all scales. Equity in opportunities to improve well-being and eradication of poverty at the individual level will also play pivotal roles in the transition towards planetary stewardship.

9. Interconnected issues require interconnected solutions. Rapid scientific and technological progress can provide potential solutions – if adopted in timely manner – to reduce the risk of deleterious consequences for societies everywhere. But technological innovation alone will not be enough. We can transform our values, beliefs and aspirations towards sustainable prosperity.
10. Research plays a significant role in monitoring change, determining thresholds, developing new technologies and processes, and providing solutions. The international global-change research community proposes a new contract between science and society in recognition that science must inform policy to make more wise and timely decisions and that innovation should be informed by diverse local needs and conditions. This contract needs to encompass three elements:
B1. Integrated goals for global sustainability based on scientific evidence are needed to provide essential targets for societies. In support of this, the international scientific community calls for a framework for regular global sustainability analyses that link existing assessments that build on the foundations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services and other ongoing efforts. Such analyses can be designed to bring coherence to the science-policy interface.
B2. The challenges facing a planet under pressure demand a new approach to research that is more integrative, international and solutions-oriented. We need to link high-quality focused scientific research to new policy-relevant interdisciplinary efforts for global sustainability. This research must integrate across existing research programmes and disciplines, across all domains of research as well as local knowledge systems, across the North and South, and must be co-designed and implemented with input from governments, civil society, research funders, and the private sector. As part of this new collaboration, at this conference the global-environmental-change programmes support a major research initiative, Future Earth: research for global sustainability.
B3. New mechanisms to facilitate an interactive dialogue on global sustainability among the various stakeholders and the policy-making community at different scales. Such interactions should be designed to bring societal relevance and trust to science-policy interfaces, and more effectively inform decision-making to keep pace with rapid global change.

11. To these ends, the initiatives above must be supported by:
• A greater commitment to fund and support capacity-building in science and education globally, and particularly in developing countries.
• A strong commitment to both applied and pure research and increased efforts to bring together disciplines, across all research domains.
• Strengthened support for observing systems, particularly in developing countries, including the new observations needed to support decision-making for global sustainability. New approaches should fully integrate global observing systems for environmental and social issues.
• Continued exploration of new areas of knowledge, such as theoretical and applied research in behavioural science and economics addressing ecological and social tipping points and irreversibility at multiple levels.

12. The United Nations Rio+20 Conference is an opportunity the world must seize at this crucial juncture. The UN Secretary-General’s Global Sustainability Panel report, Resilient People, Resilient Planet, provides a strong strategic framework for a sustainable future while calling for a marked strengthening of the interface between science and policy. The findings of the Planet Under Pressure conference support the key recommendations including:
C1. Fundamental reorientation and restructuring of national and international institutions is required to overcome barriers to progress and to move to effective Earthsystem governance. Governments must take action to support institutions and mechanisms that will improve coherence, as well as bring about integrated policy and action across the social, economic and environmental pillars. Current understanding supports the creation of a Sustainable Development Council within the UN system to integrate social, economic and environmental policy at the global level. There is also strong support for strengthening global governance by including civil society, business and industry in decision-making at all levels.
C2. A commitment to the proposal for universal Sustainable Development Goals is needed, as goals for Global Sustainability. These should be developed to take account of the synergies and trade-offs in and between areas such as food, water and energy security, maintenance of biodiversity and ecosystem services, sustainable urbanisation, social inclusion and livelihoods, protection of seas and oceans, and sustainable consumption and production. The research community should be involved in the development of goals, targets and indicators, recognising interconnected issues and building on existing measures of well-being. They should apply to all levels of governance.
C3. Recognition of the monetary and non-monetary values of public goods such as ecosystem services, education, health and global common resources such as the oceans and the atmosphere. These must be properly factored into management and decision-making frameworks at the national and sub-national levels to ensure that economic activities do not impose external costs on the global commons. Corrective measures that internalize costs and minimize the impacts on the commons need to be identified and implemented through regulatory and market-based mechanisms.

13. Our highly interconnected global society has the potential to innovate rapidly. The Planet Under Pressure conference has taken advantage of this potential to explore new pathways. It has marked a new direction for global change research. The international scientific community must rapidly reorganize to focus on global sustainability solutions. We must develop a new strategy for creating and rapidly translating knowledge into action, which will form part of a new contract between science and society, with commitments from both sides.
14. Society is taking substantial risks by delaying urgent and large-scale action. We must show leadership at all levels. We must all play our parts. A strong contribution from all stakeholders should make the UN’s Rio+20 conference a defining moment that sparks global innovation to move us towards a sustainable future. We urge the world to grasp this moment and make history.

London, 29th March 2012

From Nagambie to the land of the Fib Dems

The wetlands and billabongs around Nagambie, about 2 hours drive from Melbourne are awash and brimming with life. Australia is in the midst of a La Nina event and much of the landscape in south-eastern Australia is awash in spectacular, peculiarly Australian, ways (see these Wolf spiders for example).   The bird life is spectacular as we found out on a recent week-end in the locality - red-capped robins are particularly appealing.

In contrast England is experiencing a severe drought. There have already been crisis meetings amongst the main agencies and water companies. Fears for the summer are high.

London, striving to be Olympics ready, is pock marked with building activity.  The merchants of Regent St clearly anticipate a retail bonanza as many of the shops are undergoing major makeovers.  My Cockney cabbie preferred Boris to Ken in the mayoral stakes.  The bike riders are thicker than ever but accidents seem closer to hand. Compulsory road tax and insurance for bikers was my cabbie's policy prescription.

The new roof (or vest) at King's Cross Station is spectacular - surely now worth more then 200 Monopoly pounds! Though it was a little cool having our afternoon tea.

Steve Hilton, close friend and advisor to British PM, David Cameron is taking leave of the Civil Service and thus his championing of the 'Big Society' project.  Some reports make it clear that he was frustrated at his inability to push through reforms and public sector intransigence. Others are pleased at his departure!

The headlines upon my arrival seemed to suggest a government that had taken leave of its senses.  Road privatisation was on the agenda - was nothing learnt from the failures of rail privatisation? A two tier pay system was being proposed for civil servants in the north and south - clearly no one had explored the systemic implications of such a policy!  Who will ever vote for the Lib Dems (rebranded Fib Dems) again?

On the other hand the spring flowers were as enchanting as ever and the weather glorious.

More on fracking

In the New York Review of Books Bill McKibben reviews three important accounts of fracking including Josh Fox's documentary, 'Gaslands'. He gives a balanced overview but the final message is, for me, still one of despair.  He notes that:

'The rush to exploit 'extreme energy', and to rip the planet apart to get at it, knows no national boundaries.  Urbina reported last year that the big energy companies have spread the fracking technology around the planet finding new shale deposits in more than thirty countries.'

Regulators are in no position to keep up.  Thankfully in Australia we are now begining to see positive effects from concerted opposition.  It remains to be seen what position the new coalition government in Queensland will take.

Systemic approaches to education and the legacy of John Dewey

Schooling and university education are being debated across the world - it is a hot topic in Australia, the UK the USA etc..  It never ceases to amaze me how so many commentators, politicians and civil servants (i) generalise from their  own limited experience; (ii) trust the big consulting firms to deliver effective innovations (rather than repeat business); (iii) fail to learn from history and (iv) have no, or limited, appreciation of how learning operates.  Given my own experiences of three major Higher Education (HE) learning systems (traditional, didactic; student centred, experiential learning; student-centred supported open learning) it was thus pleasing to read a two-part series 'Schools we can Envy' and 'How, and How Not, to Improve the Schools' by Diane Ravitch in the New York Review of Books.

In particular I like Pasi Sahlberg's acronym 'GERM' as it is so fitting a description and metaphor for what is happening in the UK and Australia.  This extract explains the main points:

"Like George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind, Barack Obama’s Race to the Top program is part of what Pasi Sahlberg calls “the Global Education Reform Movement,” or GERM. GERM demands teaching to the test. GERM assumes that students must be constantly tested, and that the results of these tests are the most important measures and outcomes of education. The scores can be used not only to grade the quality of every school, but to punish or reward students, teachers, principals, and schools. Those at the top of the education system, the elected officials and leaders who make the rules, create the budgets, and allocate resources, are never accountable for the consequences of their decisions. GERM assumes that people who work in schools need carrots and sticks to persuade (or compel) them to do their best.

In Finland, the subject of the first part of this article,¹ teachers work collaboratively with other members of the school staff; they are not “held accountable” by standardized test scores because there are none. Teachers devise their own tests, to inform them about their students’ progress and needs. They do their best because it is their professional responsibility. Like other professionals, as Pasi Sahlberg shows in his book Finnish Lessons, Finnish teachers are driven by a sense of intrinsic motivation, not by the hope of a bonus or the fear of being fired. Intrinsic motivation is also what they seek to instill in their students. In the absence of standardized testing by which to compare their students and their schools, teachers must develop, appeal to, and rely on their students’ interest in learning."

The irony is that theoretically what Finland does takes much of its inspiration from the work of American John Dewey, who was also a great influence on Systems scholars like Russ Ackoff and West Churchman.  The GERM countries would do well to revisit John Dewey in their policy formulations.  Unfortunately this would require a major policy about-face as the key starting point.  A contemporary Deweian approach  needs re-recognition that education is a public good - an investment in a society - rather than a private good equipping the individual to compete in a mythical market. I do not see GERM politicians championing such a strategy.  Not even the UK Fib Dems had the courage of their convictions when it came to the crunch.